Földvári Books

The First Printed Edition of the Steganographia

Trithemius, Johannes

Steganographia: Hoc est: Ars per occultam scripturam animi sui voluntatem absentibus aperiendi certa… [With:] Clavis Steganographiae. [And:] Clavis Generalis Triplex in libros steganographicos.

Frankfurt; Darmstadt: Ex Officina Typographica Matthiae Beckeri, sumptibus Ioannis Berneri; Ex Officina Typographica Balthasaris Hofmanni, sumptibus Ioannis Berneri, 1606. First edition. Three titles bound into one volume as usual. Eighteenth-century full calf with gilt spine, apparently reused from a slightly larger volume. Contemporary decorated paper pastedowns. Edges gilt. pp. [8] 180; [6] 7–70 [2 (blank)]; 7 [1 (blank)] p. Pages toned. Two pairs of leaves misbound in the first work (L3 preceding L2; V3 preceding V2). Final leaves loose. Free endpapers lacking. Otherwise in good condition.

The first printed edition of Trithemius’s legendary Steganographia, one of the defining works of Renaissance cryptography and learned magic.

One of the most influential and controversial intellectual works of the Renaissance, the Steganographia unites cryptography, natural philosophy, astrology, and angelology within a single system of concealed communication. Although long regarded as a manual of angelic magic, modern scholarship has demonstrated that much of its elaborate apparatus serves cryptographic purposes, while the interpretation of the third book remains debated.

Composed around 1499 but circulating in manuscript for more than a century before its publication, the work profoundly influenced Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa and later writers including John Dee, Giambattista della Porta, and Athanasius Kircher. Its publication in 1606 led to its inclusion on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum in 1609, where it remained for nearly three centuries. It remains one of the defining works in the history of cryptography and Renaissance learned magic.

Johannes Trithemius (1462–1516) was a German Benedictine abbot, humanist, and polymath. As abbot of Sponheim and later of St. Jakob in Würzburg, he transformed both monasteries into important centres of learning through the development of their libraries. Renowned as a historian, bibliographer, and cryptographer, he profoundly influenced Renaissance humanism, occult philosophy, and the early history of cryptography. Among his pupils were Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa and Paracelsus.

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Price: €20,000.00